A Gaggle of New Bird Paintings
I don’t see any new posts here on Bindle since mid-December. Crickets…
Alan, is the site still viable?
Today (January 19, 2024) is the first time I’ve had a chance to come see what’s been going on here.
Personally, the last 6 weeks or so have been overwhelming.
Art gallery administration stuff – about 60 hours a week, keeping things running and prepping for the annual juried art show- has sapped all my time and energy. Why do I do this to myself? When I figure that out, I’ll probably just resign as board prez and leave it to someone else.
Today I’m here to share a group of paintings- all small works of birds- that I started in September. The first 4 were done by early December; the last one was painted yesterday when I finally had room to breathe again.
The reference photos for these were either taken by me or with the permission of the photographer.
The reference for the American Goldfinch was shot by a local wildlife photographer, C. Griffis, who now owns the painting.
The Mountain Bluebird reference came from a high school classmate, Jim Botta (Farmingdale HS, class of ’73), an accomplished photographer of birds. We just had our 50th anniversary reunion on Long Island, and yes, I went. I think I travelled the farthest, coming from Washington State, of all who attended. It was wonderful.
Future bird paintings I’d like to do- Cedar Waxwing, a pair of Cardinals, a Steller’s Jay.
You know me- once I get into a series, I go for it!
All of these are 8″ x 10″ oil on board.
Featured image above: Mountain Bluebird (female)
Below:
Eastern Blue Jay
American Goldfinch
Northern Flicker
Western Tanager
01/19/2024 @ 10:21 pm
These are beautiful
01/22/2024 @ 2:16 pm
Thank you Kosh.
01/20/2024 @ 12:28 pm
Whoa wondering
… don’t know much ’bout ornithology ,,,
& my forever glib hand held dropped a hay bale
what with ORTHOLOGY catalytic swoom — sum day
soon thus far ,,, of a feather all kinds of weather
01/22/2024 @ 2:16 pm
🙂
01/22/2024 @ 10:52 am
Those are wonderful in detail.
I saw a Northern Flicker a few days ago. Western Tanagers used to show up right outside my office window before moving to the coast.
Beautiful work Rose.
01/22/2024 @ 2:18 pm
I got me a great shot of a Steller’s Jay! Now waiting for new surfaces to arrive from the art supply store! Thanks for commenting.
01/22/2024 @ 2:36 pm
I was sorry to hear about the passing of your dog. I follow your posts on Facebook although I don’t always comment, so you are always being heard.
I wanted to thank you for using Bindle. I just wish others would. Can’t figure out why no one does. Mostly have given up trying to develop it further.
I need to use it more myself, I guess.
01/22/2024 @ 2:44 pm
Hi Alan,
I think it must have been another writer whose dog passed- I seem to recall reading that recently, but can’t remember who it was- I have two ancient cats, but no doggo!
Thanks for reading my stuff, though. There are folks here on Bindle that I don’t have contact with otherwise, and I would sorely miss them.
That’s not an argument for keeping it going, of course.
01/23/2024 @ 11:20 am
Rose, you’re in the burd wheelhouse too. As long as there are burds to watch, listen to, laugh at, and draw/paint, I can feel happy.
My latest project is an attempt to befriend a group of crows on my walk route. I can tell at least two recognize me. They stare down from overheard branches and we make mutually curious eye contact. They also seem able to pick me out from other pedestrians who ignore them. I’m guessing if I start bringing food, that might up my game.
Color seems a primary attraction for you, was for me too, until a sparrow series kicked off my sepia obsession. At present on the table are the heron chick and leopard frog giant foot smackdown image that I posted on IG, abt 70% finished. Next image on deck is starlings. They will be a good place to explore the all black zone in case the crow buddies become muses.
Bindle has indeed been quiet. I check now and then, but mostly not. Ron was the glue I think.
Are you teaching this semester? How go the ceramics? I love those octopi…a bird cup would be fun too.
Back to work. Am listening to the NH primary coverage in the studio. UGH. Maybe I should turn it off, ya think?! ❤️
01/23/2024 @ 1:08 pm
Hey there, Suzanne! Yes, the birdies have got me hooked. Loving it.
How cool that you have some crow friends.
Because we have an indoor/outdoor cat, I can’t do any more with our local murder except talk to them when they come by. They always stay a safe distance but they do seem to recognize me. It’s lovely.
Yes, I’m teaching this quarter. Just one section of Art Appreciation, online/asynchronous. Usually this course is fun and easy for me. This time around I have mostly high-school-aged students who will not heed the “don’t wait until the last minute to turn in work that might need editing” and then are outraged that they lost points because of submitting sideways images, or forgot to include the text response, or did their drawing on LINED (gasssppppp) paper (that’s a 0 right there) instead of the mixed media paper they are required to have for the course.
But really, I think (hope) they are getting an important life lesson when there are consequences to not doing what is asked of them. I don’t know, though. I mean the solution is so simple- all they have to do is submit one freakin’ day ahead, and I can tell them what they need to do to fix it, since they obviously don’t read directions! but 11:57 pm when the assignment closes at 11:59 pm is not gonna work for me or them.
What I’ve been finding since the pandemic sent me online to teach (and the convenience kept me there) is that over the last 2 years, students are less and less engaged and have less skills and the discipline required to be responsible for their own learning.
As an experiment, I am going to teach my other course (Art for Teachers) in person on campus for the Spring quarter. I’ve said it before- the students who want to be preschool teachers -that’s who takes this course- have always been lacking in academic skills but mostly they have big hearts and the willingness to work with those small bundles of terror, the 3 to 5 year old set. I do my part in helping them acquire the necessary training to pass certification tests. it’s always been an uphill battle- but online, effective student participation has plummeted.
I want to see if in-person is more effective, and I think it will be. I will let you know.
Yep, doing lots of ceramics. My pottery studio is a small free-standing building. It does have a heat source but it gets turned off when I’m not using it, so at night it can go pretty close to freezing, so I move all the clay and glazes into my painting studio for the winter. It’s now very difficult to move around in there, but I make it work.
Using the kiln is fine- that thing doesn’t care what the outside temp is.
Anyway, the slab roller I ordered last April finally arrived in mid-November. I wasn’t able to use it because of being tied up with gallery stuff- the big annual juried show- but that got off the ground last weekend, so I set the thing up and have been doing clay almost every day. It’s amazing!
The octopus is still a big theme in my pieces, but yesterday I made one with a lil’ crab. I am thinking more sea life as a continuing theme. I have a 2-woman show coming in June with a watercolor artist- she will show her loose and ephemeral paintings, and I will show mostly sea life ceramics.
Politics make me very anxious these days. That fucker’s whole term, and before and ever since, has proved to me to be the death knell of functional government. I think it’s always been a rather shady biz, but grabbing it by the throat and squeeeeezing without consequence has been horrific to watch.
Gonna go hide in my studio and prep some things for the kiln. I’m thinking I’ll have enough for a firing in about a week or so.
Please post your stuff on Insta!!!!
01/23/2024 @ 1:58 pm
What you’re finding with high school students is same with college art students. They think making pictures is easy and fast and that process work means tracing something, and they all want to use markers. No need to learn how to mix cad yellow and pthalo blue, just grab the lime green marker and you’re good to go. Many of our seniors want to do a comic or character design for Senior Thesis, a research heavy class. They claim they already have everything they need in their heads. Many who did beautiful work in my advanced topics in drawing class, then seem to lose skill, rather than build it by Senior Thesis. It makes me crazy. A friend who teaches history says it’s the same for her, that students expect fast projects with a few paragraphs of reading then an A at the end. The good ones still rise to the top, it just seems like more are crowding into the flat and mediocre B/C grade level. Less competition for the really good ones is my present view.
Yeah politics, ugh. I wrote a long comment to Alan. I refuse to give that a**hole any more of my attention. I’m not pretending he isn’t there, just not giving him any more of my precious life energy until we’re closer to the election. It’s too exhausting, along with everything else.
I’m looking forward to whatever emerges from The Slabmaker…sounds like a formidable wrestling champion. I have been drawing every day in the morning, but making more and more labor intensive drawings. The foot fight is at 117 hours so far and I still have half a frog to do. I will post it when it’s finished, but that may be a couple weeks. IG has started to feel like work these days, much crud to wade through, yet still I miss posts from friends and former students. Also, the algorithm has me totally wrong, stuffing the feed with white Birkenstocks, pink parkas, and Kraft marshmallows. Maybe they’re partly right (Birkenstocks).
01/23/2024 @ 2:19 pm
Yes, I know that student decay is endemic across all boards. My classes are always a mix of HS kids in the Running Start program (A WA state program that allows HS students to graduate from HS with an AA degree- tuition free), “regular” college students working toward an AA or BA, and students of all ages through their 60s and 70s. The college allows senior citizens to take classes free of charge as long as there is room. So I get quite the mix.
Each age group has its issues. The elders don’t feel the need to comply with any directions or materials. They also don’t get graded, or else most of them would just fail.
I have an artist friend who is a master plasterer and contractor. She does beautiful work, and is an upbeat, enthusiastic free spirit. Her art in plaster and glass is very expressive. She brings demos and classes to groups all over the country, and folks just love her.
Because of her long and capable teaching experience that way, this past summer, she was offered a teaching job at the local high school- they are hurtin’ big time for art teachers- and she took the job. She has a college degree but no ed training, so they gave her a provisional cert and sent her for a introductory course at the college where I teach.
Then, they gave her 2 sections of “discipline problem” 9th graders (on purpose! The veteran teachers don’t want them!) , the Yearbook class, and 2 art classes.
She lasted for half the year, and is leaving now at the end of January.
She said no one makes these kids do anything they don’t want to, bad behavior is rampant, the administration has no consequences. The attendance rate for seniors is BELOW 50%. The students are allowed to have- and always have-their phones out- she described one class as painting with one hand while looking at their phones in the other. They were NOT looking at reference material.
The last straw came for her when the latest behavior happening every day was students encouraging other students to fight each other, and then everyone records it on their phones to post to social media.
WHAT IS HAPPENING??????
01/23/2024 @ 4:00 pm
omg
omg
omg
your poor friend!!!
how did she even make it to the end of semester?
I get the sense that we could shut down any bar if we got to talking f2f.
LOVE the term ‘student decay’!
We get older ‘non-traditional’ students too, but generally, I adore them. They often want to squeeze all they can out of a class, overworking their projects, wanting extra assignments. One woman used to ask me half a dozen questions just as class was ending, and follow me out to the car, still asking away. They’ll email pix of their work in progress and want six paragraphs of response. Although they can be exhausting, I like having students who are art terriers, definitely prefer them to tracers and marker users.
For awhile I used to collect their phones in a festively painted box, something they actually seemed to like a few years ago, but not sure I could get away with that now. One time I answered a student’s phone when it rang in class and told the caller that G couldn’t talk until class was over. For weeks after that, not one phone came out.
Sometimes after a particularly disappointing crit, or insistence that pencils sucked and markers ruled, I’d sit down quietly while they worked and make a drawing using an office pencil and Dick Blick paper, something observed in the room, like a crumbling area in the ceiling, or the classroom trash can, or one of my favorites, a stubbed out cigarette on the floor. Early on, they think you’re crazy, drawing ugly boring objects w/o color, but then the Bob Ross Effect kicks in, and you can hear a pin drop and they’re all watching. By class vote, whoever did the best job with their drawing project the next week would get my drawing.
You’d kill them with watching you make an octopus cup!
01/23/2024 @ 4:01 pm
like this
03/08/2024 @ 2:03 pm
SUZANNE
‘I close my eyes then I drift away
Into the magic night, I softly say
A silent prayer like dreamers do
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you’
Hart ends his Roy O. quote free as a byrd and wanted to be everywhere at once hey a joke or two, curious if GOOG ever in a day hires non STEM then impersonated who’s it Cook or Belafonte in the tri-fold though he could not find his green bandanna …. trying to remind reader that Camus once center paged an asterisk*that’s the power of love; like water
02/20/2024 @ 8:39 pm
GHOST MODERN
(full court free press)
an era of darkness
Hart and Sole
He fans fly weights
incognito
{LO;}
only God
can make a peacock
likewise a Spring Green
S outh of the Border:
N orth of the Soul
L ast X IT Y 2.
Publish the Scholastic Aptitude Test!
Rights reserved: gray shirts: black rectangular
OLDER NOW glittered-glinted rhinestone silver, golden
Lots of nerve as though a lasso taser. T(hen) he asked the cosmic female for ‘assam tea’ please and she goes:
: … tell me something I don’t know…:
as the horse fled — born free
diamonds and lust
as frozen as
FERLINGHETTI
cloppin’ time
like redwoods janglin’ brass rings
when our xylophone chimes
kaleidoscopic stars